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Article Title:
Global Economic Downturn and the Manufacturing Sector Performance in the Nigerian Economy (A Quarterly Empirical Analysis)
by M. A. Loto

Abstract:
This paper was able to analyse the position of the Manufacturing sector in the Nigerian economy both descriptively and empirically before the global meltdown and during the period of the global meltdown. The significance of the study is that the manufacturing sector of the Nigeria economy will be able to know its competitive strengths and weaknesses during and after the global meltdown, and if possible take advantage of it. Descriptively, the two years before the meltdown and two years into the meltdown were analyzed in quarterly time series (i.e. 2005Q1 to 2006Q4 and 2007Q1 to 2008Q4) and also empirically Pooled data for the two periods were also used in order to have reasonable observations (16). Descriptively, the performance of the Nigerian manufacturing sector was analyzed using the indices of performance such as (index of manufacturing production, manufacturing export, import, capacity utilization and share in total GDP). It was discovered that before the meltdown, all indicators of performance used shows a downward trend. The period during the meltdown shows some little insignificant improvement in some of the performance indicators such as manufacturing GDP, capacity utilization. The results of the empirical analysis from the pooled data from 2005Q1 to 2008Q4 does not really give a better result as compared to the descriptive analysis. Variables such as capacity utilization (CU), Inflation rate (INF), Lending rate (LR) both shows a positive but insignificant shock on the manufacturing performance. Only direct foreign investment was significant but negative in its impact on the manufacturing sectors performance. The outcome of the results shows that the global meltdown has insignificant effect on the manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy

Keywords: global downturn, manufacturing, error correction, structural stability, Nigeria

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